Global humanitarian assistance
Read more about our unique research and analysis, which inform decisions and support accountability efforts to increase the effectiveness and targeting of humanitarian assistance and crisis financing.
Data availability, transparency and use
Basic transparency around where and how funding is channelled through the humanitarian system – and through other financial flows to countries experiencing crisis – is critically important for coordination, targeting and to understand the impact of assistance on vulnerable and at-risk communities, but it remains elusive. Donors and international organisations must live up to commitments made in 2016 to increase transparency around funding.
We support new and existing structures that promote coordinated action for increased transparency. Our work in this area highlights where data quality, availability, or access limits or impedes analysis of key policy issues and could be improved.
Photo: USAID/Benin
Nexus and climate financing
More people than ever are experiencing long-term, protracted crises, where the complex and interrelated risks posed by conflict, socioeconomic fragility and climate change exacerbate crises and lead to increased humanitarian need. Coordinated humanitarian, development, peacebuilding and climate-related finance and programming is essential to help communities weather shocks.
DI analyses financing, policy and programming at the nexus between humanitarian response and development, peacebuilding and climate interventions. Our research and outreach contributes to effective monitoring, promotes accountability and ensures the most vulnerable communities are better able to respond when shocks occur, recover from crisis and build resilience.
Photo: Denis Onyodi/KRCS
Reform of the humanitarian system
The humanitarian system is under ever-growing pressure. The number of complex and long-term crises is increasing, driven by continued system-wide shocks, including climate change, and new and escalating crises, such as the war in Ukraine, the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria and the worsening conflict in Sudan. There is a clear and urgent need for change in humanitarian funding and response to address the underlying causes of crisis more effectively. Seven years on from the commitments made in the Grand Bargain, progress is slow.
DI analyses funding, policy and practice on key areas of reform including the provision of quality funding to local and national actors, including overheads, and the use of cash and voucher assistance in crisis contexts.
Photo: © European Union, 2022 (photographer: Eduardo Soteras Jalil)
Humanitarian crises and response
Many people in need of humanitarian assistance face multiple dimensions of risk and most humanitarian crises are now long-term. Understanding the resources and key developments supporting people facing humanitarian crisis is a cornerstone of our flagship annual Global Humanitarian Assistance Report.
Our research and analysis on broader crisis finance helps policy and technical leaders make sense of a growing and increasingly complex crisis financing landscape, including key developments in the sector, donor priorities, the drivers of crisis and their length and type.